You can simply look at a Nexus 6 and this year's Moto X to see the strong similarity between the two devices. While it may be somewhat of a disappointment to see the Nexus venture away from the design found in last year's phone and Google's two most recent tablets, there are some good things to come from this turn of events. One such nicety is the inclusion of something akin to Moto Display, formerly known as Active Display, and referred to here as Ambient Display.

On the Nexus 6, an option appears under display settings with the description "wake screen when device picked up or notifications arrive." As long as this remains enabled, notifications will appear on the screen automatically whenever new ones arrive or the phone is picked up.

The screenshot and photo below come from a leaked dump of the Nexus 6 ported to a Nexus 4.

Update: Here is a clearer image, also taken on a Nexus 4.

The Ambient Display terminology appears on the Nexus 6's Play Store page, but Google doesn't offer a description there of what it does. Instead it points out that the phone will last for up to 250 hours on standby with the feature turned on and 330 with it turned off.

This feature first appeared on last year's Moto X, and it has shipped in several Motorola devices since. This appears to be one of the perks of having the manufacturer produce the Nexus 6. For people who have grown accustomed to the functionality, the convenience is difficult to give up. If you aren't already hooked, prepare yourself.

Almost. (80÷330)*100 = 2424.24% would make more sense.
I'd suggest to observe (80÷330)*100% or, heck, why not even 80÷330?

Đức Thành

Or 8/33, or better yet, 24/99 which is a bit more than 24%.

Jacob Seifert

24/99 is awesome!

Đức Thành

I'm a genius, I know. People don't give me enough credit.

Connor Mason

I suppose so. Thanks for the correction?

Serge Cebrian

so many numbers :O
i hate math...

ehh wait
i love math

and you have a mistake (i would say finger mistake)is not 2424.2424
lose the first 24 and you get 24.2424 :D

Guest

On an AMOLED display, it should be a marginable drain compared to LCD.

Michael Jones

The numbers are in regard to the Nexus 6 so it is using AMOLED. I think the big decrease is due to the 6 not having the contextual core and IR sensors that the Moto x 2014 has. Probably needs more power to realize its in a pocket for example.

nhizzat

The contextual core is built into the SoC. The Moto X doesn't have IR sensors either so it's not much of an issue.

Evan Knofsky

Yes, yes it does.

One other fun feature on the front of the new Moto X is the appearance of four infrared sensors on the four corners of the face. Those are used to detect motion and movement in front of the phone as part of "Moto Actions."

The moto x definitely has IR sensors just look at the front of a white one. Also the 805 has the low power voice core sure but not the one that the Moto X uses for motion which is used for active display.

Simon Belmont

Actually all Snapdragon 800 series SoCs have a low power sensor core. It's separate from the Hexagon DSP that gives those SoCs the ability to do always on listening, too.

The Nexus 6 and Nexus 5 both have that low power sensor core. It remains to be seen if both will have this feature, though.

Jason B

Yeah, Motorola is using the Hexagon DSP for Moto Voice, but they're using an Atmel sensor hub for Moto Display, IR sensors, and all other sensors on the device (er, on the Moto X 2014).

Simon Belmont

True enough (and interesting). With all those extra IR sensors, and other stuff going on, etc, I'm not surprised.

But, for a pick up to wake, a plain Jane Snappy 800 could perform it without much of a hit to the battery (if any). And, we know that the Nexus 5 will get always on listening with that Hexagon DSP when it finally gets the final build of Lollipop and the updated Google Search app.

Pavel Sikun

afaik it beams bunch of sensors all the time. Look at moto x reviews - you'll see 4 sensors at front that constantly blink.

Dirty Dave

Nexus 6 doesn't have infrared sensors on the front, the X does.

Pavel Sikun

Then most likely nexus 6 listens to gyroscope&&proximity sensors all the time.

KevinMCo

Those sensors are nearly invisible to the human eye. Cameras happen to show IR as a purplish color, but in real life it's a very, very dim red that you can only see when looking straight on at the device.

Matt

They're actually quite visible in the dark (I presume they're not entirely in the infrared part of the light spectrum)...it's kinda cool.

Thomas Phillips

Reduces standby time by 25%. Thats kind of a lot.

dude

D you just leave your daily phone alone for 250 hours at a time?

There is only 24 hours in a day and most people sleep 8 hours.

Thomas Phillips

The Nexus 5's standby time is quoted at 300 hours from Google. Need I really say more? Have you ever even approached anything remotely close to that? Of course not. And kind of depressing that the Nexus 6 is only able to eek out 10% better battery life than the Nexus 5 when the display is OFF and this cool feature is disabled. Wonder what that means for when the giant display is on.

Matt

It's AMOLED, so the entire display isn't on. The flaw in your logic is the assumption that, because total idle standby time decreases by 25% if nothing is being done with the phone and ambient mode is enabled, it will decrease by the same proportion during regular usage.

With cellular data, voice calls, GPS, GPU, actual screen-on (i.e., not just part of the display but the whole display) taking up far larger proportions of the actual battery life, these 80 hours from 330 hours don't necessarily equate to 6 hours less out of 24 hours on.

It might be only 5 or 10% of actual standby time or even less because there's a lot more battery-intensive stuff actually causing the phone to only last 24 hours instead of 330. The theoretical maximum is decreased substantially, but the actual maximum in real world usage is not going to be decreased anywhere near as much by this ambient mode.

Thomas Phillips

No, what I am saying is that the quoted standby number is nonsense to begin with. The real standby numbers can be estimated by people's experience with the Nexus 5, which sadly has similar standby time to the quoted numbers for the Nexus 6. So when you take 25% off of the standby time with a feature like this, you absolutely will notice it day to day. It wont obviously be a 25% reduction in battery life or anything close to that, but it will be felt. What is concerning is that the Nexus 6 only has a 10% increase in standby time when compared to the Nexus 6, and that is with the display off. Can't imagine what the battery life is going to look like with that massive display on pumping nearly double the pixels.

Matt

"It wont obviously be a 25% reduction in battery life or anything close to that, but it will be felt."

What are you basing this on?

Thomas Phillips

Experience? If they are quoting a 25% reduction in standby time, and their standby time numbers are known to be overly generous, then it stands to reason that the reduction will be felt day to day.

Matt

Experience with active display or with standby time in general? I know standby time in general is way shorter than 330 hours, but I'm suggesting that it's a huge assumption that the decrease will be felt at all by leaving active display on. Instead of powering on the full display for several seconds to check notifications, quite a few notifications can be quickly dismissed by only powering on part of it and letting the user swipe those away.

This, combined with the fact that everything else on the phone is causing a much more substantial drain during real world usage (all the stuff I already mentioned), means that it very well might not lead to increased drain during normal usage at all. Obviously that's difficult to test in a replicable manner, but I really do think that you're making a pretty big assumption by thinking that the active display on will be felt during normal usage just because it's felt during 330 hour standby in which nothing is being used.

Thomas Phillips

Now that you mention it and the more I think about it, I think the ambient display will have a more significant effect on battery life than I previously thought. I get probably a hundred notifications a day, of which I only check for maybe a dozen or two. If my display is going to be activated at every notification, it could lead to a pretty large hit in battery life.

But the display doesn't matter with what I was talking about previously, its the sensors constantly running that are causing the decrease in standby time, not the display. If you have ever messed around with Tasker and enabled a profile that depends on accelerometer data or proximity data, you absolutely feel the extra battery drain in normal day to day use.

Matt

Ehhh I think that, even in a special usage case like yours (hundreds of notifications per day), it's very debatable. If you're actually turning your phone on to check those notifications regularly (not for each one necessarily, but for every 10 or 12), the battery might be better with active display. If it's in your pocket or face down on a desktop, active display isn't turning the screen on. Later on, you can move your hands towards it and still see those notifications on the active display.

Sure, those sensors take up some battery (though the infrared ones on the Moto X are substantially more power-efficient than many others) but that's often counteracted by not enabling that display and the fact that they can utilize just the lower power co-processor instead of the primary processor that turns on when you power the whole thing on. Usage varies and hundreds of notifications per day is going to be different in power usage from 20-30, but I still don't think it's as clear-cut as "well, sensors are on and the screen lights up with notifications so in normal usage it will still use up lots of battery." That said, it would certainly be interesting to find out.

DT

You've never used Active Display. It INCREASES your day-to-day battery life.

axnjackson11

That's why I'll be using AMOLED friendly themes on my apps and for the background.

trent

Add to that the Nexus 5 should (in theory) get a bump in battery life with 5.0 due to project Volta.

Thomas Phillips

Wow, didn't even think about that. Wonder if the Nexus 6 will have worse battery life than the Nexus 5. Can't imagine it will be worse, but I could see it being comparable. I will laugh so hard at all of the people defending the price who threw the battery in as a "no compromise" feature on the Nexus 6 if its battery life isn't significantly better than the Nexus 5.

h4rr4r

Have you ever tried? I have never left mine alone that long.

Thomas Phillips

I have left my phone before sitting for 24 hours without touching it several times, as every electronic device I own can receive and make phone calls through Google Voice, and the best I have ever gotten is a 20% loss over those 24 hours. If the quoted times were to be believed from Google, the battery should have been at 92% instead of 80%.

h4rr4r

Did you leave the cellular connection on?
If you did, odds are you do not have perfect reception at all times.

Thomas Phillips

No, airplane mode with WiFi on.

h4rr4r

Even my old Galaxy Nexus lasts days that way.
Some app waking the CPU?

Richard Yarrell

I have to say the truth nobody needs a useless featureless unproven stock android phablet it’s no purpose today.

Another big screened smartphone with NO PURPOSE or true multitasking/productivity abilities or option is a sad farce to the phablet category made prominent by Samsung.

Users don’t need these fraudulent products this device is just as stupid as Apple’s wanna be iphone 6 plus phablet that arrived looking like a busted Galaxy Note 2 at best.

I’m happy Google put it’s foot down and dumped all those cheap never want to spend a dollar group discount price break shoppers who always looked to that yearly price break from Google they acted like they were holier than thou.

Real buyers of true products put their money where there mouth is yearly not expecting any price breaks for the products they buy yearly.

You can rest assured Google Nexus users were a small segment of the android platform before this change which resulted in a less than 5% market share now that segment will be even smaller.

At the end of the day Nexus products will never matter it’s Samsung who makes android what it is today Worldwide globally Google will never top that.

squiddy20

Yeah, because you and you alone speak for all "users". Get over yourself. You're just a washed up nobody who spews completely inaccurate, wishful fanboy BS.

Richard Yarrell

You are and always have been nothing more than a silly person who leaves useless comments on websites. When have you ever spent money on a legitimate product.

I've always laughed at you since 2010 your unemployment ass is on a budget that's never gotten better since.

At the end of the day real men buy little boys leave comments time to become a man if that's possible.

You are a sad babbling coward who is a typical asshole troll nothing more nothing less.

squiddy20

Richard, Richard, Richard. Still making "silly" childish, unfounded insults I see. Despite your age (at least 50 years old), here you are acting like a bratty 8 year old. And you talk about "real men". Ha. What a joke.

"At the end of the day real men buy little boys leave comments time to become a man if that's possible." Real men buy little boys? Really now? Well then, you're more f*cked up than I thought. Punctuation, Dick. It helps a ton.

Hybrid

Google is not trying to top they. They make money off of selling ads, not hardware. So all that nonsense you just wrote goes in the trash. If google wanted to dethrone Samsung they could and would. Google's goal is to get and keep as many people as possible using android so they can push ads. You are clueless! Android is about choice. Everybody does not have a lot of money, so to get a nice phone for a little less works for them. Android is about choice and that was a choice they had with nexus. I buy notes and notes only. I she'll out full price so I do not sign contracts for subsidized pricing. I bet you do, but claiming you put your money where your mouth is and I bet you upgraded every 2 years before programs like jump came around. Lol, acting like you have big dollar. I have never kept the same phone for more than a year and never sign contracts, do the math.

Lyrrad

Another way of looking at it is that it uses 1% of the battery every 10 hours. If you charge every day or two it shouldn't be very noticeable.

Thomas Phillips

The Nexus 5 has 300 hours standby time according to Google. No one in the history of that phone has had it come anywhere close to that. So take the quoted 330 hours standby time of the Nexus 6, which is depressingly only 10% more than the Nexus 5, and then subtract 25% from it and you are looking at around real world use 17% less standby time than the NEXUS 5 if this feature is turned on.

Justtyn Hutcheson

Correct. The balance is that you will most likely be actively using the device less often by not turning on the full display to check and manipulate notifications and firing off all of the onScreenOn activities 100+ times/day. So, while reducing the theoretical standby time, it will most likely increase the overall battery life for the average user.

Boringmebacktodeath

It's just 24%, reletaviley miniscule in practical terms because after all who would have the phone just sitting there for two weeks? I just want to point out that this doesn't mean instead of 24hours you'll end up with just 18 hours if you have this enabled with typical use; screen-on time will will probably drain the battery more to where this feature is only maybe 8%. My unscientific 2cents.
Anywho, instead of having 13.75 days in standby you end up with 10.42 if you wanna shelve the phone for 2 weeks.

There is no official preview for the Nexus 4, so you might have the one ported over from the Nexus 6.

Fatal1ty_93_RUS

But the question is - does this imply having this feature across all 5.0 devices or only N6?

Matt

It doesn't imply that it's across all 5.0 devices necessarily as there could very well be different functionality built into AMOLED vs. non-AMOLED builds (just like there is currently with tablets vs. phones). If this is the port from the Nexus 6 to the Nexus 4, then we definitely can't be sure. We'll have to wait and see when the final builds drop.

Dmitry Leovin

I think is all 5.0 devices. Or NOT? :)

Protoss

Exactly, a bug-free port running very smoothly

ssj4Gogeta

Without the AMOLED screen, how much is the battery affected?

Protoss

I didnt used battery saving mode yet

Guest

My battery seems to be burning quickly while in use hut stand by time is great so far. How's yours?

Protoss

I cant tell now how my battery is because i installed this port earlier this day, my best on-screen time was 3h 50min with franco kernel in a stock rooted 4.4.4 rom, if i used the battery saving mode i would have reached more than that on this port, i can tell you right away that the battery is great, without being that better, time will tell us more

TDioWS

Yep, it's a Nexus 4. That's weird. Maybe this feature is now part of the OS (as the nexus are supposed to have the untouched version of Android), but the n4 doesn't have the dedicated hardware to do that, so I wouldn't expect the same UX.

It doesn't have the hardware to detect you picking it up necessarily, but it can still show you new notifications. That doesn't need hardware.

Matthew Wu

Would Nexus 5 consider having the Hardware ready?! since the 800 has that built-in....I hope Google would enable it on N5!!!!!!!!!

Jared Denman

N5 doesn't have a AMOLED screen, but neither does the n4 so who knows.

TDioWS

Yes, and I always wanted something like that on mine. Too bad it's digitizer stopped working on the navigation buttons so close to the Lollipop release... if only Nexus 6 wouldn't cost two livers here in Brazil :(

WestSiide

I prefer a notification light.

CJ Jacobs

No Android phone runs an untouched version of Android. AOSP is untouched Android.

krazyfrog

Definitely a Nexus 4. Even the screenshot resolution in the Google+ link is 1280x768.

Apps like Dashclock (i.e. lockscreen widgets) are dead on Lollipop since the functionality was removed.

miri

Nice. So all it's missing compared to the Moto X is the Quick Capture gesture? I'm not sure how willing I am to give that up as I've managed to get several photos that I'd have missed otherwise.

Mario Limonciello

Also Moto Assist and Moto Connect. There are third party options out there that can accomplish a lot of what they do, but not baked into Android.

Brandon Miller

Since all of these Moto features are now apps in the Play Store, I wouldn't be shocked to see Motorola allow the Nexus 6 to use them. Again, not baked into Android itself, but the Nexus 6 may get to use those particular apps.

Mario Limonciello

I suppose that's very possible. I do believe they had to make changes to Android framework to allow them to hook in the way they did. Time will tell!

miri

Moto assist is pretty well covered by Lollipop's features and Motorola Connect was opened up after the Moto 360 launch.

Mario Limonciello

Oh really? I didn't know that most of Assist made it into L.
Conncet: Opened up in the sense that it's used for adjusting options on the 360. It doesn't do the same feature of the SMS/MMS syncing unless you're on a Moto X/G/Droid Turbo etc.

Jace Hernandez

Does anyone know if the Nexus 6 will support double-tap to wake, like the Nexus 9 will??

Brandon Miller

As I understand it, that is actually baked into Lollipop. I'll try to find confirmation on that.

Booyabobby

Tap to wake? Lollipop keeps getting better and better.

Brandon Miller

"Where supported by hardware" apparently.

Simon Belmont

The Nexus 9 will support it definitely. It shows that feature in the specifications.

The Nexus 6, I'm not sure. It doesn't say it does.

nhizzat

With this, you won't need tap to wake.

Dmitry Leovin

Nexus 4 on the photo?

Connor

Yep. My Nexus 4, my baby.

Dmitry Leovin

My too.

Johnson

Does it work on the N4 or is this exclusive to the N6?

Connor

As seen in the photo. It works on the Nexus 4, at least on the Android Lollipop port.

WestSiide

I still use my white N4.

Victor Souza

Nice, but I want knockcode more

dude

I prefer sweep2wake.

Victor Souza

I've read knockcode is going to be on Lollipop final build

Simon Belmont

Yes. For the Nexus 9.

I saw a video of it in action. It's listed in the N9's specifications but not the N6's.

dude

This definitely put the Nexus 6 back in my interest list. I guess it makes sense it have a AMOLED screen.

deltatux

Does this mean the device doesn't have an LED notification light O.o?

EowynCarter

I had been wondering about that.

makapav

I wouldn't be surprised - this kinda makes it moot. Apps like Lightflow will now be able to flash a few OLEDs as notification since Ambient Display is part of in-built Android API now as opposed to using hacks earlier.

EowynCarter

Won't that use battery more ?

Alex

Did you read the article?

EowynCarter

Of course I did.

I was wondering it using the display for just one led, rather than the full notification would change something. (But then, it seams you're supposed to be all knowing here, and that asking question is forbidden..)

nhizzat

I don't think illuminating a single pixel would be very helpful. It'll probably decrease battery usage by an insignificant amount.

EowynCarter

Well, enough pixels to make a visible dot of course.
So if there is no notification LED (shame !), it should be possible to use the screen without draining the battery. That's all i wanted to know.

nhizzat

I'm sure someone will develop an Xposed module that will allow the user to create their own notifications using active display as a base.

Fatal1ty_93_RUS

LED > active display

Brandon Miller

I'm not saying you are right or wrong, but have you used Active Display for any decent amount of time. Would be difficult to judge if you haven't.

Fatal1ty_93_RUS

For me it's more convenient to quickly glance at a blinking light on the front of my device rather than enabling the screen to see the active display

Alex

It's literally the amount of pixels shown that determine the amount of power needed to display something when the screen is "off." I would expect to see the functionality of the LED light moved to the Active Display. (Where you don't need to enable the screen to see something intermittently flashing.)

Matt

You can touch the screen and actually see the full notification though without powering the screen on fully. It's really handy for ignoring Twitter updates or messages or emails that don't require immediate attention.

With the LED, even if you know what's causing the notification using LightFlow (Email or Hangouts or whatever), you still don't know the priority level of the notification without unlocking the screen and powering it on fully....with Active Display you do. Having used the Moto X for just two weeks, I've found it really handy when I just have my phone lying on my desk next to my keyboard to dismiss notifications that don't need immediate attention while I'm working.

jonathan3579

Yeah, I agree here! I like being able to color coordinate my notifications.

Synacks

Moto X utilizes this better on battery usage.

Chris

I don't like this feature. Glad we can turn it off!

Mario Limonciello

Have you tried it on a Moto X yet? Once you actively use it, you'll find that you needlessly unlock your phone all the time just to look at the time or a notification that you don't care about. I can't see myself getting a phone without it at this point. Being part of AOSP I have high hopes that others beyond Motorola will have very similar tech implemented.

Fozzybare

i absolutely love it. i missed it going to the g3 from the moto x. i use a moto 360 now so active display is needed a lot less...and i'm not sure that i could go without tap to wake.

Chris

I just feel like my notifications are private and I don't want them flashing up for everyone to see every time they come in. It just has to do with the way I use my phone. I like big phones, and I like to keep them out on my desk or wherever I'm working. If some text or email comes in, anyone standing around can read it and I don't like that.

To each their own. That's why I'm glad it's there, and glad I can turn it off.

Mario Limonciello

Oh that makes sense. At least on the X they did have a "privacy" mode set of toggles. It would be good if those carried over too.

It lets you set which apps appear on active display and what level of detail is shown. If you don't want people to see the content of the notification it can show "icon" only.

Chris

Ah, icon only I would love.

nhizzat

You can choose to hide the contents of the notifications...

blindexecutioner

And with a little light you don't need to turn on the phone at all until you see a notification you want to check. A small notification light is so much more useful than this especially if you can set it up by priority like in lightflow.

Sequoia46.2

Active Display doesn't turn on the phone.
Not sure if that's what you were saying.

blindexecutioner

I mean the notification part of it. Where it turns on part of the display. Maybe I am confused I guess...

Sequoia46.2

If you have an AMOLED screen, this is far far far better than a notification LED light. It shows you your notifications without turning on your phone. With an LED, you have to turn on your phone and use screen on time to check the notification.

Mario Limonciello

I respectfully disagree. My previous phones had notification LEDs (that could be multicolored) and I did have things set up with lightflow. It was functional once I learned which colors meant what.

You get the same effect here but the phone only shows the time and all the information about the notification without waking the phone. The low power core drives the display and only lights the pixels that matter.

It's much richer data and a lot more useful to me.

nhizzat

How is a light more functional? This alerts you to the notifications you have without having to power the screen on. Not only that, you can unlock directly into the app with notifications. You know exactly what you have without having to press any buttons.

The size of the Nexus 6 should steer him to pretty much anything else.

jonathan3579

I disagree. Opinions.

someone755

Let's all just agree that whoever doesn't agree is a weirdo.
K jon is a weirdo.

DemandTrialByCombat

I agree to disagree

Greyhame

@Steve B and @krazyfrog ... you are both correct.

Thomas Ella

Well as someone who really really loves Active Display (Moto X 2013) I have to say that that actually looks a lot better and more functional than AD. I wonder if it'll be compatible.

nhizzat

I'm sure Moto will be incorporating it into their Android L release.

Adriano Almeida

Hm, it is probable that this brand new interface is going to come to Moto X 2013/14. Better than the current.

blindexecutioner

I use a notification light for the same information and a notification light remains on until I clear the notification and it doesn't require me to touch the phone. Unless these notifications remain on the screen until I clear them they are of no use. Having a notification show up and disappear/turn off the screen 2 minutes later isn't very useful. Most people don't stare at their phones waiting for a notification to appear.

Also, phones without AMOLED screens will take a bigger hit to battery with this if the feature is present in all versions of Android going forward.

Having the screen turn on when you pick up the phone would be nice though. It would be nice if they separated the wake on pickup from the wake on notification.

miri

But, unless you've worked out something with Morse Code, you can't see the message, what app it came from and who sent it.

axnjackson11

The notification stays there until you clear it like you would any other notification in the notification bar.

nhizzat

Picking up your phone will activate the notification display from which you can unlock the phone straight to the home screen or directly to the app with new notifications. No need to press the power button to get to the lock screen.

lcasale

So is this a Nexus 6 or a Lollipop feature?

Brandon Miller

I can't find any indication that it is a Lollipop feature so it seems like it is just for the Nexus 6. Don't quote me on that though.

nhizzat

Motorola feature.

lcasale

My last nexus was the G'Nex, but I thought the software was still supposed to be untouched by the OEM. I'm a big fan of it for my Moto X so I'm glad it's making its way to the Nexus 6 regardless.

Fatal1ty_93_RUS

Sigh,still waiting on that Nexus 9 LTE bands info

MrNinjaPanda

I have two questions. First if the phone wakes up when I pick it up, how does it react if I constantly hold the phone in my hand when walking. Will there be many false positives, where the screen will keep turning on as I walk with it in my hand?

And second, if I get a notification when I'm away from my phone, then return but don't touch it, will I know that I have a notification. Like with LED, will it "blink" from time to time?

Moto X User

If it's like my first or second generation Moto X then nothing will happen. I do that too around the office. It "knows" when you're picking it up and it'll flash. Otherwise the screen just stays off. I literally just tested this by picking mine up (it lit up) and walking around (it didn't light up).

And yes, the whole point of Active Display is that it will "blink" from time to time. So you'll know there's something worth checking out on your phone.

MrNinjaPanda

Thanks. And with your Moto X, can you set how often the display turns on to show you the notification?

nhizzat

I don't see the option on my Moto X but it "blinks" once per minute like a notification light would.

m477

Once per minute? It is much faster than that.

Moto X User

No, you can't. Not seeing it in the settings for Display. Then again, you don't need to. Trust me it "breathes" naturally. Not too mention the display isn't turning on, it's literally just the pixels for that given notification that light up. Nothing more, nothing less.

If you want a time frame though, once every 10 seconds is my estimate. It does that til you deal with the notification or dismiss it.

it's not even remotely a battery hog or anything like that, in fact it's probably why my phone last as long as it does on any given day as opposed to my previous non-Active Display phones. I no longer turn on the screen to see what notifications have hit my status bar.

nhizzat

It only displays your unchecked notifications when picked up like in the last pic. Carrying it around in hand, the screen doesn't constantly wake because the phone understands that it is being carried.

Yes, the screen behaves like a LED light would but it only lights up the necessary pixels to display your notifications. At rest, the display shows your notifications once a minute or so. If you can't wait, a gentle rocking of the phone or a wave of your hand over the screen will activate the notification display.

Kesey

Back in the day we NoLED was popular for the Nexus S since it did not have an LED indicator. Great app and this Ambient Mode is a good way around not having an LED. Still, I feel like I'm going to miss an LED if I spring for a 6.

I know everyone has their concerns with this phone but I, for one, cannot wait!

Marcellus1

Now we just need to be able to use Tasker, AutomateIt or the like to turn this off and on at certain times. If I'm connected to PC that gives me my android notifications by pushbullet, I have no need to also have them on the phone.

Plus (and I'm not complaining about an awesome new feature here, just making a suggestion), it would be nice to be able to split the active display stuff up--so I can have notifications show when I pick the phone up, for example, but not whenever a new one arrives.

TAINT_BUTTHOLE

WTF, I know it doesn't have AMOLED, so you wouldn't want wake on every notification, but Nexus 5 should at least get the "Wake screen when device is picked up part."

Hothfox

Nice! I was hoping they'd do something with the AMOLED, rather than having it for the sake of having it.

PhineasJW

Can those number be right? So you get ~10 days standby time if you leave the phone on but don't use it?

I am kind of wondering what next year's naming convention will be. So far, the screen size has been the same as the Nexus version (or very nearly). They've already done a 7" tablet called the Nexus 7, and I can't imagine they'd make a 7" phone, so ...

Tal Ben-Ari

Nexus 6 (2015) is my bet, considering that's what they did with the Nexus 7...

> "wake screen when device picked up or notifications arrive."
Is it possible to enable "when notifications arrive" and NOT "when device picked up"?!

If not, I will keep using AcDisplay.
It's simple, beautiful and well configured by default.

But +1 for integrating all missing features into mainstream ROM instead of resorting to custom ROMs or multiple applications.

Bilal Aahil

off topic question guys, how can i fix that "sign in to wifi network" i saw it on the picture above and it's been bothering me on my Nexus 5 a lot, every time I reconnect to my home network i get that notification.

El Payaso

I don't like the idea of my private information being put on display anytime someone picks up my phone. Unless the phone has some magical way of detecting that it's really me then I'll just keep it off.

nhizzat

You can choose privacy mode so that the contents are hidden. How often are people picking up your phone?

eric

I wonder if the OK google now feature will be present when screen is off

Simon Belmont

It should technically work on any phone with a Snapdragon 800 series SoC. They all have low power listening cores.

The Nexus 5 will see it for the final Lollipop build. Can't wait.

iDreamless531

I don't see this setting in my Nexus 5s display settings

Zach Mauch

FYI, Google retained the Motorola Patents when it was sold. Consequently, I see this as a result of that, not Motorola being the manufacture.

Yann Roger

Yes, I have seen that too, and you also can say "Ok Google" when the screen is off. It is tell on the official Google site for New feature coming with Lollipop.
But It is say that it will only work with Nexus 9 and Nexus 6, because the device need to be built to allow that.
This was the 2 principale new functions I wanted... And they did it... They are the best. :-)

Simon Belmont

Technically the Nexus 5 can listen with the screen off, too. It has a low power listening core in the Snapdragon 800.

The listing for Lollipop literally states "compatible for devices with digital signal processing" and the Nexus 5 has that low power DSP. I'm sure it'll get that, too.

Cory Wilson

I was wondering about that since I didn't see a notification LED

Simon Belmont

It'd be nice if Google gave the Nexus 4 and Nexus 5 a simple control for the notification LED. Like changing the colors for different apps.

Yes, Light Flow is the go to app for that and I use it a lot. It just seems like by now they'd have thrown it in there.

Jose Romero

"wake screen when device picked up or notifications arrive." Hopefully we will be able to choose either one, not just both.

Malcolm Love

So my only question in my internal Droid Turbo or Nexus 6 debate, is will the Nexus have the "always listening" or "Moto Voice" I believe it's called now? I used that way more than I ever thought I would with my Droid Maxx, it would be hard to part with that.

strikeir13

If there is a quick launch camera, that would make it MUCH more interesting...

didibus

Wait, so does that mean Nexus 4 gets this feature too?

bloomtronzero

Nope. Nexus 5 doesn't either. They don't have AMOLED screens, which is necessary to do a feature like this without pissing away battery life.

N4 and N5 have note LEDs anyways.

miri

The Droid Mini has Active Display and it has an LCD.

Oli72

My nexus 4 is blessed. Long live nexus. Lol

Cheer Chunhao

The only complain I got with the Nexus 6 is the design...god damn it Motorola done away with your ugly dimple thing already!

sb

This is basically Notification Peek on Paranoid Android Kitkat.

brandon

this is great but I hope the notifications don't really show that I can sign in to a WiFi network or that a USB is connected, I just need to see my messages and emails. Hopefully you can choose which notification show.

®yan C

Won't really be useful if the phones doesn't have an Amoled display

mwolverine

Does anyone know yet if Lollipop for Nexus 5 will have this feature? I tried googling it but all I got was clickbait.

nonex

No, Nexus 5 uses an IPS display. The hardware does not support ambient display or tap to wake without significant battery drain and an undesired look/function of these features.